A mechanism for determining an optimal compression technique for each data file when creating a computer archive file from a set of data files. A local archiving application receives an instruction to archive a set of data files and determines the file type and size of a data file in the set of data files. An optimal compression method for the data file is selected based on the file type and size of the data file. The archiving application compresses the data file using the optimal compression method. The archiving application updates meta data associated with the compressed file to include a meta compression format identifier of the optimal compression method used to compress the data file. The archiving application then repeats the determining, selecting, compressing, and updating for each data file in the set of data files to create an archive of the set of data files.